


Gag Order

by beelivia



Series: Endings [2]
Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: AU, Angst, Criminal Justice, Fire Powers, M/M, Oneshot, Prison, Sonny has mclost it, Stand-alone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-03
Updated: 2018-07-03
Packaged: 2019-06-01 14:05:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15144725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beelivia/pseuds/beelivia
Summary: Sonny doesn't understand why no one else gets why he did what he did.[Can be read as stand-alone]





	Gag Order

They’ve given Sonny gloves, thick black insulators that make his palms damp because despite what they think, he’s still human and still can’t keep too high a body temperature. He’s not made of fire. They’re cautious in their keeping of him in their neat, secure facility with a cold bed and bars on his thick plexiglass windows. Caged for their comfort like an oddity in a zoo rather than a person, pointed at as he paces with his hands cuffed carefully behind his back so he can’t remove the stifling gloves. They’re afraid of him. And they should be. Given the opportunity, he’d run and do it all over again. Cowards. Too afraid of change to their broken society. Whether they like it or not, he has only started a revolution. Let them imprison him, experiment on him. He’s said his piece and more people will rise up as he has against the world.

The thing about the brass is that they don’t know what it’s like on the streets. Hungry and thirsty children with wanting eyes and wide mouths. Bodies that were shells even before death strewn over sidewalks and dumpsters. The city’s hands are bloody but with a fresh start, maybe it can survive. Life, pure life, finds a way like the weeds in pavement cracks. Rafael used to complain about them, but Sonny’s always found their resilience to be beautiful. Like people, like roaches, they’re hard to remove and impossible to eliminate. Evolution has made something wondrous, something that survives despite efforts to destroy the few pretty things left in life.

“When did you call a lawyer?” a guard asks, peering into Sonny’s cell with keys in hand, searching and searching for the right one.

“I didn’t.”

A firm grip on his arm drags him from the four walls that he’s considered home for the past indeterminate length of time. He has no clock, nothing to count days with. If it weren’t for the occasional chatter of the guards to each other about their lives, he thinks he’d go crazy. Isolation has never been something he handled well. Down the hallway past death row inmates, he’s brought to a room empty save for a table and two chairs, at one of which sits a hunched over figure. Sonny knows that salt and pepper hair, the languid swish of that handwriting, that scowl, those piercing pale green eyes.

“Uncuff my client,” Rafael says coldly.

The guard scrambles to obey because something in Rafael’s tone leaves no room for argument. When his hands are free, Sonny stretches his arms immediately, moaning at the release of forced tension. He takes his gloves off too, throwing them down on the table. Red welts from too tight metal for too long throb in the open air, but he keeps the pain off his face to the best of his abilities. Rafael gestures for him to sit and orders the guard out, leaving them alone. Face to face like adversaries despite the fact that they had once been in love. It’s Rafael’s face that he used to wake up to every morning with a grin. Things had been so good. He doesn’t understand why it had to end.

“I brought you something.”

Rafael produces Sonny’s favorite hoodie and sets it between them like a peace offering. Up on that roof, before Rafael let them arrest him and steal the one thing he had left, it had been a security blanket. Full of memories of their shared apartment, being loved and cherished and wanted. When he first bought it, he knew it would become his first friend after a particularly long day at work. That Rafael not only remembered it but brought it to him makes him hate his once-lover who gave him up to the police a little less. Rafael is hard not to love. And he hates that, hates not being able to calm his racing heart. It isn’t fair that he has to feel like this when Rafael clearly doesn’t want to be the same ever again. He isn’t allowed late night kisses before bed or stolen glances in court anymore. All of that is gone.

He picks up the hoodie anyways and slips it on over his starchy standard-issue shirt. Its softness and familiarity have been missed. Something so small has made a world of difference but all he can do is nod in thanks. Funny, he used to be the one with all the words but now he has none. Rafael no longer smiles speechlessly at every affectionate moment, shy kisses over breakfast, neat brushes of lips on their way out the door. He misses those moments most of all. In the silence, he wraps himself in the old warmth memories drip over his head like the hot showers he hasn’t been allowed to take since his arrest. They’re too afraid of letting him near anything warm, lest he use it to destroy their prison like he did Manhattan. This place too, is dirty beyond repair. He’d like to fix it, starting by leveling those who’ve been placed here because of their unspeakable crimes. 

“You told them you’re my lawyer?”

“I am. Even you get due process, Sonny.”

Looking up at him, Sonny feels the pain from the confrontation. Rafael had called him sweetheart and held him, like everything would be okay. Then he betrayed him in the blink of an eye without an ounce of remorse on his penciled face. “Even me? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You murdered thousands of innocent people.”

“No one is innocent, you know that better than anyone. And it’s worth it. We have to start from scratch.”

Rafael leans back in his chair and studies Sonny with his analytical eyes. He used to look at perps like this, trying to figure them out and get under their skin. It’s his way of learning how to win, because he hates to lose. Whether it’s court or a ‘friendly’ game of scrabble, he likes to win. He likes to be right. This is just an elaborate game of chess to him, it has to be. Personal investment is out of the question when Rafael has taken his cold and callous exterior and turned it to Sonny, using it against him like he hasn’t since before they got together. What a happy night that had been, sharing a bottle of wine and Rafael using an uncharacteristically tiny voice to ask if they could turn several shared nights into a relationship. They hadn’t known how much that would destroy them both. Rafael’s kisses have always been warm, just like the rest of him. Cuban blood, Rafael had joked once, when the winter was chilly and despite his own protests, his skin had been the only thing capable of thawing Sonny’s icy exterior. With his hands the sole source of heat, he struggles to keep the rest of him from shivering.

“So you are crazy, then.”

“I thought you were on my side,” Sonny says. “You told me I’m not a monster. You told me I’m a good man. And you’re here to represent me. Doesn’t that mean you’re supposed to believe me? Or did that die when you left me?”

The look on Rafael’s face is pained when he answers, “I just don’t know anymore.”

Over the table, they stare each other down, statue to statue with frigid gazes. Inside, they’re both human, although the exact percentage is something Sonny debates often with the wall of his cell. Humans, or at the very least, normal people, don’t bleed fire from the pores in the palms of their hands. Rafael is human, though. It shows in his aging with every passing second and the way he gave Sonny up when they had the option to start over. He had given Rafael a choice, something that the dignity of which had never even been considered something to give to him. Nothing is fair anymore, hasn’t been since the morning Rafael was selfish in the hospital and then salted the wound while opening a new one. He abandoned him. Left him alone in the world like he always has been and this time it was just too fucking much. He’s tired of being treated as disposable.

“Are you here for the police again? Make me confess to you or something?”

“Even if I was, it wouldn’t be admissible because you’re under the impression that we currently have attorney/client privilege. You passed the bar, Sonny, you know that.”

He isn’t sure he knows anything anymore, if he’s honest. Trying to save the world, the same thing he’s always done, has suddenly made him a criminal comparable with the monsters he’s used to taking off the streets. Back when he and Rafael were a team, putting them away together and knowing that Manhattan- the world- was a better place for it. Many late nights were spent poring over notes and case law together with Sonny’s legs tucked under himself and his head resting comfortably on Rafael’s shoulder. Bad guys would go away, and hopefully by the time they reemerge, if they ever do, they’re incapable of hurting anyone else ever again. That’s the goal. Make the streets somewhere safe for Sonny’s nieces, and one day his kids because he’s always wanted to be a father. Rafael didn’t, he said that he works too much, he’s terrible with kids, they can’t afford it. In truth, Sonny thinks that it’s because he’s petrified of becoming his father. It’s stupid because although he hides it well, Rafael is a sweet man who makes a point to shut the door softly when he’s mad. When he comes home, he takes off his shoes and his coat. He smiles in the sunshine. The truth is that he’s a nice man, a good man, and he would’ve been a good father if he wasn’t so ruined by his worst fear.

“I don’t know much of anything anymore. Especially not about you.”

“You aren’t being fair.”      

The look he shoots Rafael says it all. They got good at that after a while, saying everything they needed to in a split second without a single word passing their lips. It was useful for conversations held over the table in the squadroom, or when Sonny needed Rafael to see the same opening in court that he did. Now it’s just a fragile reminder of all that they used to have and be. Why can’t Rafael understand? The world needs fixing. It has to be changed and reshaped and cleansed.

Waiting for more words to pass between them, he starts drumming his fingers on the cold tabletop like it’ll tell him what to do or say. On instinct more than anything, flames start to flicker in his palms, warming the cold air but not the frigid atmosphere that lingers between them. The last time they were this unfamiliar were the early days of their then friendship, still getting to know each other and figuring out what they would become. Sonny remembers those days, sitting on Rafael’s desk and calling him counselor, trying not to blush like a schoolgirl, and thinking that he would never have a chance. He did have one, and he blew it. He always does that. Things will be going great, then he fucks it up because he can’t leave well-enough alone. Long past are tentative kisses on the doorstep and unsure hands beneath shirts in the dark. He doesn’t miss the arguments, but he misses when things were good. Rafael was the yin to his yang, the calm to his storm. Now they’re little more than adversaries staring each other down over the visiting room table of a maximum security prison eager to keep him imprisoned and away from the public eye. Vanishing is more convenient for the government, because it offers him no escape, no way out, nothing but a lifetime of incarceration and eventually death. Maybe they’ll off him sooner rather than later, save the judicial system some money caring for what they barely regard as a human person.

“I’m not being fair? You tricked me, Raf. You didn’t want to help me, you just wanted to help them catch me.”

“That’s not true. If I didn’t get you to relax, they would have taken you in by force. I’m here to help you, get you a plea deal so that you don’t spend the rest of your life between four heavy duty concrete walls.” Rafael plays with his pen the way he does when he’s thinking. “Your best bet is probably an insanity plea. You’re delusional, you thought you were doing the right thing, you didn’t know you were in the wrong. You’ll probably be locked up with the criminally insane, but it’s a lot better than here.”

Sonny lifts his hand from the table and studies the fire in it. “I’m not crazy. I’m a visionary.”

“Do you want to spend the rest of your life in prison?”

“No.”

“Then you plead insanity.”

His next moves are instinct. To defend himself, his mission, the city, he has to eliminate all obstacles, even if that includes his defense attorney and former lover. He’s just so angry, and it fills him with the urge to make it all go away. The world needs to start over. He’s doing this for the good of everyone else, not himself. It’s all the innocent people that he has to save. He repeats to himself that he’s doing it for them when he lunges over the table. His hoodie hangs loose around him as his hands turn the skin of every part of Rafael he touches to an angry pink. All he can hear is the sound of blood rushing in his ears, watching the warm colors of his fire and Rafael’s burns get more saturated until his arms are wrenched behind his back and he’s dragged away. Cuffs return to his hands and as he’s taken away, he sees Rafael start to cry.

**Author's Note:**

> My tumblr is @space-carisi


End file.
